On Thursday, Sept 8, 2011 at 6:30pm EST, I’ll be presenting Banish RBAR! to the Richmond SQL Server User Group. The last time I presented here was the week of PASS Summit, so I’m hoping for a greater turnout.
The abstract for this presentation is:
SQL Server is primarily designed for set-based operations, so code that performs Row-By-Agonizing-Row (RBAR) operations is going against the design, rather than working with it. Come to this code filled session, where we will examine several recent additions to SQL Server, and learn how the vast majority of RBAR code can be replaced with efficient, set-based code. Learn how the APPLY operator works; iterate through incoming data just once with the MERGE statement; “slice and dice” your data with the Windowing (ranking) functions; re-write your multi-statement table-valued functions to inline functions to help the optimizer and speed up your queries; learn how to create a grouped delimited list – without loops!
Weblink? Or just in-person?
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Hi Jon,
This one is just in-person, at the user group.
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Thanks for the wonderful presentation tonight! I am looking forward to trying out the FOR XML method of creating delimited strings and exploring table variables with cross apply.
Thanks again!
Geoff
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I’m glad that you liked it Geoff. Please follow up with me at other user group meetings and let me know how these are working for you!
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Your presentation was the first explanation of how to use the FOR XML function to create a delimited string that I could digest and then re-use in my own database context. I came home from the meeting and couldn’t wait, so I tried out. I tweaked it a bit to be a standard SELECT column subquery instead of a CROSS APPLY subquery, and it still worked perfectly. I created comma-delimited lists of profile codes (a “tagging” method in my database), of phone numbers (with phone type), and of children in each family unit. I am ecstatic because until now these lists would be (a) complicated to create and (b) limited to a fixed number of elements. With the FOR XML approach they are easy and open-ended. As I posted to Twitter: My queries will never be the same.
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Your talk was very informative. I applaude you for coming and speaking.
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I attended the talk at the RSSUG and found it informative and stimulating. I would like to download the slidedeck and the demos but the URL provided at the end of the talk is not working at this time (//www.waynesheffield.com/presentations/banishrbar/banishrbar.htm)
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Sorry about that Ulysses – I just discovered that the link is case sensitive. It should be //www.waynesheffield.com/Presentations/BanishRBAR/BanishRBAR.htm
I’m really glad that you got something out of the presentation. Thanks for coming tonight!
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